New domain registrations can be added to a new or existing Netfirms account. Each Netfirms account includes 1 free e-mail account (unless you upgrade to a hosting package). If you are looking to register multiple domains and want an e-mail account for each, you can either create a separate Netfirms account for each domain or upgrade a single Netfirms account to a hosting package.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will be enforced by the European Union (EU) on May 25th, 2018. The GDPR is a strict set of rules centered around customer privacy. Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has released a temporary standard to comply with GDPR while it negotiates with GDPR. As of the 25th, Oracle will remove the contact information from it’s whois server to comply with the GDPR as a temporary measure until the full ICANN standard is released.

Domain names put a friendly face on hard-to-remember numeric internet addresses. Every computer on the internet has a unique internet protocol (IP) number. A domain name represents one IP number or more. For example, the IP number for the domain name whitehouse.gov is 104.109.178.94. The whole purpose is to give users an easy-to-remember handle so that when sending an e-mail to, let's say, the President of the United States, you can type president@whitehouse.gov instead of the more unwieldy president@104.109.178.94.

Your domain name is how visitors easily find you online. It is often the first step in getting your website started because it is like establishing your website’s street address on the internet. If you did not have a domain name, you would have to give out your IP address to everyone who wanted to visit your website, which would get confusing and be easily forgotten.

Domains are nonmaterial goods. When sold, the only transaction taking place is transfer of domain rights from one user to another. Barring any form of copyright or trademark violation, virtually any domain name can be bought or sold. Generic domain names, such as car.com or computer.com, are not legally protected and can therefore theoretically be reserved by anyone.
There is also what is called a ccTLD, or country code top-level domain. These are designed to signify sites located in or associated with certain countries or territories. Most of the ccTLDs actually don't have restrictions regarding who can register domain names. In fact, many ccTLDs are commonly misinterpreted as TLDs. For example, while .tv is commonly registered by television and media related websites, .tv is actually the ccTLD designated for the country Tuvalu. Domain hacks are also a popular use of both TLDs and ccTLDs. This involves creating a full word or phrase when combining the domain name with the TLD to create something your audience will easily remember. A popular example is using the .me ccTLD for Montenegro and combining it with "aweso" to create the domain aweso.me.

There are tons of great domain names available for registration and it can take as little as five minutes to register one at any domain name retailer. These online stores make it very easy for you to search for available domain names with name suggestion tools. They also offer complementary services, such as Web hosting and website design so you can register your desired domain name and set up a website all at once.

The dispute was over the innocently-named Site Finder Service, launched by Verisign in 2003. With traffic to every .com domain going through Verisign, the Site Finder Service redirected anyone accessing an unregistered domain (via a typo, for example) to a Verisign website with sponsored links. The company argued that this was more useful to Internet users than seeing a generic error page. Whatever their reasoning, this made Verisign the de-facto owner of every unregistered domain (what else does it mean to own a domain?), and skyrocketed them from 2,500th into the top 10 most visited websites. The best part? Verisign launched this without running it past anyone.

Domain names are often simply referred to as domains and domain name registrants are frequently referred to as domain owners, although domain name registration with a registrar does not confer any legal ownership of the domain name, only an exclusive right of use for a particular duration of time. The use of domain names in commerce may subject them to trademark law.

In the first quarter of 2015, 294 million domain names had been registered.[17] A large fraction of them are in the com TLD, which as of December 21, 2014, had 115.6 million domain names,[18] including 11.9 million online business and e-commerce sites, 4.3 million entertainment sites, 3.1 million finance related sites, and 1.8 million sports sites.[19] As of July 2012 the com TLD had more registrations than all of the ccTLDs combined.[20]

Registering a domain name lets you create a personal presence on the web. With your own web address, you can control your online identity by linking to any other site with more information about you. For example, you can register a domain name and forward it to a website, blog, or social profile page like your Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter pages. A domain name can protect your personal brand and help your career.
Domains that are indexed on Google and highly ranked are particularly attractive to traders. Other SEO aspects, such as backlink profiles or the search volume of the keywords in domain names, also play a significant role in appraising value. Design can also positively affect the price of a domain. Short and succinct names that are easy to remember are especially advantageous. Endings are further factors that should be taken into account. Top-level domains (TLDs) such as .com or .org are by far the most sought-after endings.
If you cancel within 30 days and your plan includes a free domain, Bluehost will deduct a non-refundable domain fee of 15.99 from your refund. This not only covers our costs, but ensures that you won't lose your domain name. You may transfer it to another registrar or simply point it elsewhere at your convenience. Please note newly registered domains cannot be transferred to another registrar during the first 60 days of the registration period. You retain ownership of your domain until the end of its registration period unless you renew it.
As always, we welcome all verifiable sales reports from companies, private sellers or individuals with knowledge of an important sale made through any channel. To contribute information and help make this column better, just drop a note to editor@dnjournal.com. We truly appreciate the industry leading companies who share their sales information with us to help everyone in the business get a handle on current domain values.
What’s easy to forget, though, is that Verisign have managed .com for the past 20 years without so much as a hiccup of disruption or downtime, and that there’s no guarantee that a more democratic or competitive process would have resulted in the 2 decades of .com stability that we’ve enjoyed. Internet governance is obviously important, but we should remember that the overwhelming majority of users don’t know or care what’s going on behind the scenes.
Domain investors build a portfolio of valuable domain names, and attempt to sell them at a profit. Both Sedo and Afternic offer domain marketplaces (also known as Domain Listing Services, or DLS) for investors to advertise their domains to potential buyers. Once the seller and buyer agree, the aftermarket platforms then facilitate the purchase and transfer of the domain(s). As an Enom customer, you’re entitled to list your domains for sale on Sedo, Afternic, or both at the same time. Get started
Registries and registrars usually charge an annual fee for the service of delegating a domain name to a user and providing a default set of name servers. Often, this transaction is termed a sale or lease of the domain name, and the registrant may sometimes be called an "owner", but no such legal relationship is actually associated with the transaction, only the exclusive right to use the domain name. More correctly, authorized users are known as "registrants" or as "domain holders".
The practice of using a simple memorable abstraction of a host's numerical address on a computer network dates back to the ARPANET era, before the advent of today's commercial Internet. In the early network, each computer on the network retrieved the hosts file (host.txt) from a computer at SRI (now SRI International),[4][5] which mapped computer host names to numerical addresses. The rapid growth of the network made it impossible to maintain a centrally organized hostname registry and in 1983 the Domain Name System was introduced on the ARPANET and published by the Internet Engineering Task Force as RFC 882 and RFC 883.